Considering Rosetta is running PPC apps in OSX at roughly one third the speed as native, I think it is possible to run Classic OS's at roughyl that speed as well.. Perhaps Sheepshaver needs better optimization?

this is just not true. Dell often have deals which shave hundreds of dollars off their laptops. Recently I configured an E1505 with Core 2 Duo 2ghz, 2gigs RAM, 120gig HD, DVD burner, 1400x900 (or whatever the res is) 15" screen, ATI X1400 video card, and it was going to cost me $990. I hardly see how a $1099 Macbook even compares to those specs. Sure the Macbook comes with an iSight, and the firewire port can power bus-powered devices, but thats just a huge spec difference for the price.
In the end, I didn't buy the Dell just cos I'd much rather be running OSX without hassles and be able to update to Leopard. I will most likely buy a Macbook when Leopard comes out. Sure I'll be getting slightly less powerful hardware, but I guess thats the price for quality software and design (and don't forget that you probably won't be speaking to someone in India for tech support).

thanks to subzero1266's method I also have ALC880 audio input and output running 10.4.8 with the newest semthex kernel as of today! The only slight problem I can see is that the volume control in the menubar doesn't affect the volume, except mute when its all the way down.

I wanted to know if people had decided to just buy a Mac because they couldn't be bothered with all the patching etc involved to get their hardware working, or if they would never buy a Mac; what their reasons were.
EDIT: I messed up the submission of the poll so the questions are screwed up, you have to answer both instead of just one. sorry

Ok well I figured out how to get the Realtek 8139 going.
Basically you gotta install a previous version of 10.4 which is know to work with your Realtek card (I installed 10.4.6 first), and then install the 10.4.8 over the top doing an upgrade install (boot off the DVD and do this). This fixed my ethernet problems and also restored the sound support too.
Hope this helps!

As the topic says, after a new installation of JaS' 10.4.8 with the new kernel, my Realtek 8139 PCI ethernet card is not detected by the OS. Is there a fix for this that I have missed somewhere? All previous versions worked with this without any problems.
Thanks

Why don't you guys stop posting/complaining about how slow the torrent is, or where you are up to? It achieves nothing, is completely boring, a waste of space, and this isn't a forum about torrents and their speeds.
What would really be interesting would be people posting about successes or failures on installing this.